When your god has the same powers, characteristics, ability to help mankind as I give to an imaginary being that I invent in my mind and both are beyond the ability of science to detect in the real world, then guess what, your god is imaginary.

My imaginary car can't do what a real car does.
My imaginary "anything" can't do what the real thing does.
But my imaginary god can do ALL the things you say your real god can do.
That puts your god in the same realm as my imaginary one, thus making it also imaginary.

Insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

(30-12-2012 02:15 AM)Phaedrus Wrote: God might be beyond science, but any action he takes in the material world must at some point cause material effects. He must manipulate matter, energy, or forces to cause miracles, and that manipulation should at least be hypothetically measurable or detectable.

For instance, if god cures a blind person's cataracts, then science should be able to detect whatever force or materials are causing those cataracts to break up, even if the ultimate cause is supernatural. Same goes for a supernatural soul, by the way.

^

Bastard beat me too it.

I actually had a discussion that followed along similar tracks, wherein a theist asked me what evidence I would expect of god.

To cut my story short: I told him anything measurable and verifiable. (I remember listing DNA (or it's equivalent), reasoning if it is living in anyway (based on living, interventionist god kind of god concept), it should have something that effect, pictures and/or verifiable documentation of it etc.)
He called "God's not physical, so why expect physical evidence?" To which I replied "If it interacts with the physical universe, it's actions should still be measurable.
He then denied that evidence must be verifiable, and claimed math as if proof of that.

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

I agree with you. Its patent bullshit. We can still enjoy fantasy stories and movies without buying into magical thinking in the real world. We can still play fantasy computer games so its not like we don't get opportunities for our imagination to run riot. In the real world however i think we need to keep rooted in reality and the beauty is that the universe is full of real wonders that boggle the mind and are way more interesting than fairy stories that humans have invented.

(29-12-2012 06:46 PM)GodlessnFree Wrote: I am assuming that the people reading this are smart enough to know that the desert myths are false. I usually have an easy time debunking the anecdotes/ logical fallacies that theists use to prove the existence of a god/ their god.

However, yesterday I was having a conversation with my aunt who unfortunately happens to be a nun and I asked her for evidence for her god. She replied that she didn't need any evidence because it was not a "scientific claim" but rather a claim that is beyond the "realm of science". I asked her then what was her reason(s) to believe in her god, her reply was "faith".

According to her, faith is simply "the way to know the reality beyond science". Then, she said that I was closed to faith because I had been absorbed by the deceit of "scientism". She also claimed that she couldn't explain me her reasons for believing in her god because since I believed in "scientism" my mind was "closed to anything beyond science".

That seems patent bullshit.

This isn't the first time I find this ridiculous argument. Popular christians of different intellectual capabilities ranging from John Lennox to VenomfangX always try to "debunk" atheism by equating it with "Scientism". Francis Collins said that scientism was a sign of close-mindedness.

Lennox illustrated his criticism of scientism with a metaphor: Aunt Matilda's Cake. The metaphor is often praised among faitheads, I suggest you watch it in case you haven't done so yet. In a nutshell, the metaphor of the cake explains that science can allow us to know the physical properties of the cake (density, weight, volume, material composition) but not the metaphysical properties of it (purpose, maker, proper use). Then the cake is compared to the universe and Lennox claims that the universe also has metaphysical properties that are beyond science and require another way of reasoning in order to be known.

Well, enough of my rambling, I wanted to hear opinions/objections towards this high-sounding but really fallacious argument of "The Limits of Science". The best I got yet is AronRa's brilliant response: "Science may not have all the answers, but some answers are better than no answers at all, and that's what religion gives you".

Cheers.

I suspect God isn't beyond the scope of science. But he may be well beyond the scope of this universe or any universes and beyond our comprehension of reality.

That's assuming that God does, in fact, exist.

And that's a big IF.....

"IN THRUST WE TRUST"

"We were conservative Jews and that meant we obeyed God's Commandments until His rules became a royal pain in the ass."

If God eliminated someone's cataracts, science would be able to determine THAT they were gone, but not HOW they were removed. Because a wizard did it. There's no unit of measurement for wizard power. Also, it's a unique phenomenon with no corresponding natural laws. So it can't be reproduced.

On the manipulating forces thing, I'll say this. Say removing cataracts requires 1.21 gigawats. God could just spontaneously generate that from nothing, which would baffle science because it should have been impossible. Or he could just snap his fingers and make it happen just like that without all the Great Scott and the flux capacitor and the huhglayvin! That too would baffle science.

I don't think we would need science to observe the absence of cataracts in a patient that previously had them. We would need science to try and answer why or how they had actually disappeared. I agree that since it is a hypothetical case study it would by definition not be repeatable, though that doesn't mean there isn't potential observable "residue" available for analysis.

Yes, I agree there is no unit of measurement for wizard power, at least currently. Remember Arthur Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Just because don't have the ability to detect something today doesn't mean that we won't be able to detect it at a later date, which was the point of my first post. Take for example the famous video from the 60's, I think, that showed frame by frame a bullet passing through an apple. High speed photography became an invaluable source for observing the unobservable and now we can do the same thing for a beam of light. If you are interested the following link will take you to a TED talk about femto-photography and what it can do: http://www.ted.com/talks/ramesh_raskar_a...econd.html

Regarding a type II error. When I design and interpret the results of any experiment I am acutely aware of potentially committing two errors that have significant repercussions for the scientific community at large. The first is a type I error and is an error of reporting a finding that doesn't actually exist. This does not necessarily mean that the report is fabricated, although that does happen occasionally. It could mean that I simply engaged in confirmation bias and misinterpreted my results and report that something happened when in fact it did not. This is the most serious error that can occur and must be avoided at all costs. It sets the scientific community back, especially when subsequent work may be based on your findings. Naturally, it will be discovered that an error exists but the question is always how long it might take before the discovery.

This leads to the type II error. This is simply an error of not finding a result when one actually exists. Usually this arises from not looking at the data carefully enough and is a relatively easy error to commit, especially if you have a complicated data set and are asking complicated interaction questions. This error does less damage to the scientific community. If I look at a data set and believe I have found nothing then I am not likely to submit that information for publication. Although a negative finding can be as important as a positive finding. The most important way this error damages science is that it hinders progress in a way. Time spent answering a question that has already been answered is time that could have been spent elsewhere.

Free Thought here is a video for ya that might help with your friend when he talks about math.
Around 8:25 in the video, math is discussed with the claim that math is purely rational and has it's roots in set theory.
Enjoy

Insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

(30-12-2012 05:52 PM)Rahn127 Wrote: Free Thought here is a video for ya that might help with your friend when he talks about math.
Around 8:25 in the video, math is discussed with the claim that math is purely rational and has it's roots in set theory.
Enjoy

I have watched that many times. I explained that math could be shown and had, itself, evidence to support it, he dropped off of the conversation after that.

I simply ended because I had no desire to attract too much attention away from the topic at hand.

The people closely associated with the namesake of female canines are suffering from a nondescript form of lunacy.
"Anti-environmentalism is like standing in front of a forest and going 'quick kill them they're coming right for us!'" - Jake Farr-Wharton, The Imaginary Friend Show.

Are you suggesting that we can use an oscilloscope to measure "magic"? Sorry, but that makes me giggle.

And if it did violate mass/energy conservation, do you think science would say, mystery solved, it was a miracle, or would scientists be like, "Nah, there's an explanation, we just don't know it yet."

Yeah, those pesky omnipotent beings sure do make it difficult to study their magical powers

Peace and Love and Empathy,

Matt

Really? You do realize all of magic is really an illusion, and the tricks behind the illusions are demonstrable.

But considering the idea that magic was some how a reality, science would discover the underlying mechanism by which it works. That data would be published, refined, theories chipped away at until we understood the most basic constituents of its operation were uncovered and thoroughly understood.

Member of the Cult of Reason

The atheist is a man who destroys the imaginary things which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.
-Baron d'Holbach-